
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DD01iEb53aS2 



"ii^ SPEECH 



OF 



HON. FRANK P. BLAIR, JR., 



OF ]N£ISSOXJIlI, 



ON THE ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA, 

TO BE COLONIZED WITH FREE BLACKS, AND HELD AS A 

DEPENDENCY BY THE UNITED STATES. 



DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

On the 14th day of January, 1858. 



■WITH AN APPENDIS. 






WASHINGTON, D. C. \ 

*>BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTe|s. 

1858. i 



\ 






SPEECH OF MR. BLAIR. 



Mr. Chairman, whenever it shall be in order, I shall oiFer to 
the House the following resolution, which covers the ground that 
I propose to discuss: 

Resolved, That a select committee, to consist of members, be appointed by the 

Speaker, with instructions to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisi- 
tion of territory either iu the Central or South American States, to be colonized with 
colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become 
free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United 
States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights. 

It was remarked by a gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. May- 
nard] the other day, on this floor, that he hoped and believed 
that this question would be discussed and disposed of Avithout 
reference to the subject of slavery, because, he said, there were 
no slaves in Central America. The inquiry was made immedi- 
ately, by many around me, "How long will it be before there are 
slaves there?" This inquiry shows, what is almost universally 
felt to be true, that the slavery question is at the bottom of this 
whole movement. There is a party in this country who go for 
the extension of slavery ; and these predatory incursions against 
our neighbors are the means by which territory is to be seized, 
planted with slavery, annexed to this Union, and, in combination 
with the present slaveholding States, made to dominate this Gov- 
ernment and the entire continent ; or, failing in the policy of 
annexation, to unite with the slave States in a Southern slave- 
holding Kepublic. I believe that there are those who entertain 
such a purpose. I am opposed to the whole scheme, and to every 
part of it ; and, in order to oppose it successfully, I think we 
should recur to the plans cherished by the great men who founded 
this Republic. I think we ought to put it out of the power of 
any body of men to plant slavery anywhere on this continent, by 
taking immediate steps to give to all of these countries that re- 
quire it, and especially to the Central American States, the power 
to sustain free institutions under stable Governments ; and, as 
one method of doing this, we might plant those countries with 
a class of men who are worse than useless to us, who would prove 
themselves to be of immense advantage to those countries, who 



would attract the wealth and energy of our best men to aid and 
direct them in developing the incredible riches of those regions, 
and thus open them to our commerce, and the commerce of the 
whole world. I refer to our enfranchised slaves, all of that class 
who would willingly embrace the offer to form themselves into a 
colony, under the protection of our flag, and the guarantee of the 
Republic of every personal and political right necessary to their 
safety and prosperity. 

What I propose is not new ; it is bottomed on the reasoning 
and recommendation of Mr. jefterson. Speaking of a propo- 
sition, similar in many respects, urged by him upon the Legisla- 
ture of his native State, he says : 

"It was, however, found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, 
nor will it even at this day ; yet the day is not far distant when it must bear it and 
adopt it, or wo'-se will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, 
than that these people (the negroes) are to be free ; nor is it less certain that the two 
races, equally free, cannot live in the same Government. Nature, habit, opinion, have 
drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct 
the process of emancipation and deportation, and in such slow degree as that the evil 
will wear off insensibly, and their place he pari passu filled up by free white laborers. 
If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the pros- 
pect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or 
deletion of the Moors." 

The time has ripened for the execution of Mr. Jefferson's plan. 
By adopting it, we may relieve ourselves of a people who are a 
burden to us ; give them an amount of happiness and comfort 
they can never realize here, Avhere they are treated as a degraded 
class ; reinvigorate the feeble people of the southern Republics, 
and open up to the enterprise of our merchants the untold wealth 
of the intertropical region, containing a greater amount of pro- 
ductive land than all the balance of the continent, [Note A ;] put 
a stop to the African slave trade, which is created and kept up 
by the demand for tropical productions ; by supplying that de- 
mand by the labor of the only class of freemen capable of exertion 
in that climate. [Note B.] I make this proposition to meet, 
oppose, and defeat that which seeks by violence to re-establish 
slavery, reopen the African slave trade, subject those regions, in 
Walker's own language, ^^ to miliiari/ rule," and exclude from them 
the people of the Northern States. I shall discuss and compare 
these propositions as fully as the time limited will allow me. 

Mr. Randolph, in one of his most celebrated speeches in the 
Senate, addressing himself to Mr. Calhoun, said : 

" Sir, I know there are gentlemen, not only from the Southern but the Northern 
States, who think that this unhappy question — for such it is — of negro slavery, which 
the Constitution has vainly attempted to blink by not using the term, should never be 
brought into public notice, more especially into that of Congress, and most especially 
here. Sir, with every due respect for the gentlemen who think so, I differ with them 
toto coelo. Sir, it is a thing which cannot be hid. It is not a dry rot that you can 
cover with a carpet until the house tumbles about your ears. You might as well try 
to hide a volcano in full operation. It cannot be hid ; it is a cancer on your l\ice, and 
must not be tampered with by quacks, who never saw the disease or the patient, and 
prescribe across the Atlantic. It must be, if you will, let alone. 

" But no, sir ; the politico-religious quacks, like the quack in medicine and in every- 
thing else, will hear of nothing but his nostrum ; all is to be forced — rnothing can be 
trusted to time or to nature. The disease has run its course ; it has run its course in 



the Northern States, it is beginning to run its course in Maryland. The natural death 
of slavery is the unprofitableness of its most expensive labor. It is also beginning in 
the meadow and grain country of Virginia — among those people who have no staple 
that can pay for slave labor." 

He then points his conclusion in a way to make it stick in the 
memories of the masters of slaves, to whom he addressed himself: 

"The moment the labor of the slave ceases to be profitable to the master, or very 
soon after it has reached that stage, if the slave will not run away from the master, the 
master will run away from the slave." 

Mr. Chairman, I am Mr. Randolph's proselyte; he was no 
Abolitionist, although aware that slavery was sapping the very 
foundations of the free institutions of his country — a cancer on 
the face, which, unless removed, would eat into the vitals of the 
Republic. I concur in his opinion, that the master must run 
away from his slaves, unless they run away from him. Unhappily 
for the slave States, many of their enterprising young men leave 
their native land for those States where individual ability and 
exertion are sufficient to confer wealth and eminence; and all of 
that oppressed class who are compelled to labor with their naked 
hands, and struggle for existence in competition with the monop- 
olizing slave power that holds the soil, and bands together, by a 
common interest, the capital, the intelligence, and influence of 
the order controlling the Grovernment of the Commonwealth to 
make it paramount, would also fly, if they had the means of flight, 
or a spot on earth they could call their own to receive them. Al- 
though the time has not yet come when the masters are ready to 
run away from their slaves, it will doubtless cofne, if ever that 
great mass of freemen, who feel the weight of the institution 
pressing them to the earth, should have the means of reaching 
homesteads in happier regions, where their labor might render 
them independent. Can any condition be more lamentable for a 
State, than that which makes it the obvious interest of the mass of 
its free population to abandon it? And if poverty prevents this 
desertion, the cause of detention, constantly increasing, must in 
the end grow into a frightful calamity. 

Every statesman who has looked into the condition of the slave 
States, has always found it full of difficulties. Mr. Randolph's 
solution does not end them, unless we go a step farther. Where, 
would the slaves go, if they could run away? The N"orth may 
receive an absconding straggler here and there, but what States 
would receive five million of slaves? or how would the runaways 
be anywhere provided for? The free States which have put an 
interdict, so far away as remote Oregon, upon the admission of 
free blacks, even in the stinted numl^er which might come from 
the limited emancipation permitted in the South, would hardly 
receive millions upon a general jail delivery. jSTor can the mas- 
ters run away from their slaves, unless the South is read\' to be- 
come a San Domingo; nor emancipate them en masse without 
making it a San Domingo. 

Mr. Randolph had a grave meaning in the alternatives he sug- 
gested for the riddance of slavery, although its strong sense, as 



6 

usual with liim, is pointed with sarcasm. His will shows how 
the slaves were to run away from their masters. That testament 
delivers a practical lesson to his State, more pregnant with sage 
advice than any ever received from his eloquent lips, on which 
she hung with such rapture. 

The first and second bequests read thus: 

" 1. I give and bequeath to my slaves their freedom, heartilj^ regretting that I have 
ever been the owner of one. 

" 2. I give to my executors a sum not exceeding eight thousand dollars, or so mucli 
thereof as may be necessary, to transport and settle said slaves to and in some other 
State or Territory of the United States, giving to all above the age of fortj- not less 
than ten acres of land each." 

No man ever more thoroughly understood the interest, or more 
filially studied the heart of Virginia, than John Randolpli. The 
words I have read w^ill one day be embodied in a statute of the 
State. 

Washington had led the way in this mode of deliverance, man- 
umitting all his slaves by will; and this was in pursuance of what 
long before he said the interests of Maryland and Virginia de- 
manded. In his letter to Sir John Sinclair, in reference to these 
States, he said: "Gradual abolition," "nothing is more certain, 
they must have, and at a period not remote." It seems, however, 
from an earlier letter to Lafayette, that he contemplated, with 
peculiar pleasure, the idea of their enfranchisement. He says to 
the Marquis : 

" Your late purchase of an estate in Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves 
OB it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit 
might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country!" 

He did not expect this at once, for he adds : 

" To set the slaves afloat at once, would, I really believe, be prodnctiA'e of much in- 
convenience and mischief; but by degrees it might, and assuredly ought, to be effected, 
and that by legislation." 

The legislation resulted differently, as is shown in the closing 
passage of Mr. Jeftersou's will, in relation to the slaves which 
his encumbered estate enabled him to dispose of. It is in these 
words : 

" I give them their freedom, and earnestly request of the Legislature of Virginia a 
confirmation of the bequest of freedom to these servants, with permission to remain in 
this State, where their families and connections are, as an additional instance of the 
favor of which I have received so many manifestations in my life, and for which I now 
give them my last solemn and dutiful thanks." 

The "gradual abolition" contemplated by Washington had, 
before Mr. Jefferson's death, made so large a class of free negroes 
as to endanger the safety of the white race, by inciting formidable 
insurrections among the slaves, besides producing the lesser in- 
conveniences apprehended.* Hence the law prohibiting manu- 
mission without the removal of the emancipated slaves from the 
State. Mr. Kandolph's love for his own State was so great, that 
he set an example of an exodus by sending his tribe of freed 
blacks beyond the confines of Virginia, at the cost of much mis- 
chief to another State. By the legislation of many free States, 
the intrusion of such emigration was soon prevented; and it may 



now be asserted with truth, that the laws of the free and the slave 
States combhie to perpetuate slavery! for where is the freed man 
to go? A few rich masters provide the means to return their 
bondsmen to Africa; and recently some small parties embarked 
to Mexico, to throw themselves upon the humanity of its semi- 
barbarous people. [Xote C] There is no alternative but to 
submit to expulsion, or to refuse the boon of freedom. There ex- 
isted at least a half million manumitted slaves before the proscrip- 
tive laws were passed at the North or South. In the latter sec- 
tion, where the intercourse of the enfranchised and enslaved of 
the same race is pregnant with danger, measures are in progress 
to reduce all to the condition of slavery. Laws have been passed 
in some of the slave States, providing that the freed may subject 
themselves again to servitude, if they can find a master. During 
the summer and fall, another step was taken in the direction by 
large meetings in Virginia, praying the Legislature to authorize 
a sweeping sale of all free blacks by auction — to reduce the entire 
race within the State, however slightly tinctured with negro blood, 
to bondage. [Note D.] 

Mr. Chairman, there is nothing in the comparative progress of 
the slave and free States, since the illustrious patriots of Virginia^ 
in the last and most solemn act of their lives, bore their testi- 
mony against the institution which now convulses the Con- 
federacy, tending to condemn their policy. There is much in 
the aspect now given to our atiEairs by that fatal element, against 
which their forecast gave warning, to prove that their solicitude 
to remove it had its root in that sound judgment and devoted 
love to the country, which made the strongest features of their 
characters. One great difficulty obstructed these effi)rts. Eman- 
cipation was easy, but the amalgamation of the white and black 
races was abhorrent, and their existence as equals, under the 
same Government, was for that reason impossible. They were, 
nevertheless, resolved to make the experiment of the gradual 
abolition of slavery, hoping that time would make some outlet 
to the degraded caste. I believe the existing circumstances on 
this continent now justify that hope. The attempt of i^frican 
colonization to relieve us of the load has failed. The immense 
distance, and the barbarous state of the mother country to which 
we would restore its improved race that has arisen among us, has 
paralyzed all the elforts of the benevolent society that has labored 
so long in vain to form a community in Liberia, which would draw 
hence its kindred emancipated population, and establish a nation 
there to spread civilization and religion over Africa. Time has 
shown that the causes which have produced races, never to im- 
prove Africa, or to be improved there, but to abandon it, and 
give their vigor and derive their advancement in other climes, 
are not to be reversed by the best eflbrts of the best men. 
"Westward the star of empire takes its way," is a prophecy 
which will find its accomplishment within the tropics as well as 
outside of them on this continent. Liberty and security pro- 



mote enterprise and industry, and so create that intelligence 
which brings in its train civilization and Christianity. Africa is 
a desert, in which every effort to propagate the elements which 
lead to such results have proved failures ; and for ages, Africa 
has ever been the "house of bondage." 

As Americans, it is our first interest to take care of this con- 
tinent, and provide for the races on whose faculties and labors 
its advancement depends. In my opinion, the door is now open 
in Central America to receive the enfranchised colored race born 
amongst us, and which has received, with our language and the 
habits contracted under our institutions, much that adapts it to 
sustain a part in giving stability to the institutions copied from 
ours in the Central American Republics. 

Mr. Wells, an American gentleman of high talents and attain- 
ments, with a view to promote commercial enterprises originating 
with a merchant of New York, recently traversed Central Amer- 
ica under most favorable auspices, in order to explore its re- 
sources, and obtain certain mining and commercial privileges 
from the Government of Honduras. His volume, published at 
the close of the year 1856, and which gives the condition of the 
country down to the end of Walker's first invasion, is full of in- 
formation as to the capabilities of the country, and the posture 
of the parties that distract it. It shows on what the Liberals, 
who emancipated the country from Spain, rely for the preserva- 
tion of its freedom. He was intimate with Cabanas, the late en- 
lightened and most liberal President of Honduras, whose policy 
he indicates in the brief passages I now read from his book : 

"Although, as a Spanish American, Cabanas was personally opposed, at the com- 
mencement of his administration, to the encouragement of enterprises through which 
strangers would be likely to obtain a dangerous ascendency in Central America, he 
was gradually induced, by the influence of Senors Cacho and Mejia, his Ministers, to 
dismiss these objections. In the midst of his harassing campaign in Gracias, in the 
month of July, he found time to turn his attention toward the interoceanic railway 
project; and to Cabaiias should be ascribed the double honor of conquering his in- 
born prejudices against foreigners, and of giving the principal impulse to an enterprise 
likely to assume an importance second to none in the present age. 

"Actuated by the same laudable intentions, and penetrated with the conviction that 
only through Northern industry and enterprise can the Spanish-American races be 
raised to a permanent grade of prosperity, Senor Barrundia, then far advanced in 
years, and frequently referred to in this sketch as a talented and zealous member of 
the Liberal party, was dispatched to Washington as the first diplomatic agent ever 
sent to the United States by Honduras, as a distinct Power. His death at New York, 
on the 6th of August, of the same year, put an untimely end to the negotiations, and 
frustrated the dawning hopes of the Liberals." 

The precise object aimed at in the negotiation proposed to our 
President, is made conspicuous in the address of the Minister 
Barrundia, one of the great and learned men of the country, the 
last of its revolutionary stock, whose eloquence and wisdom in 
its councils led the way to the achievement of its independence. 
His presentation speech uttered the sentiments of the President 
of Honduras, as well as those of the venerable patriot and states- 
man, and all the Liberals he led, who founded that Iiepul)lic on 
the basis of our North American Confederacy. Every word of it 



is pregnant with political meaning, to which time will give 
effect, and the House cannot fail to mark these sentences in the 
address, and give emphasis to the closing words : 

"The mission with which I am charged is perhaps more significant than any which 
has ytit originated in Central America, and its objects are such as are seldom confided 
to aa ordinary legation. It relates to the vital interests of an American people, strug- 
gling against the antagonism of monarchical principles, which, unfortunately, in some 
parts of this continent are seeking to change the blessings of liberty and independ- 
ence/or alien protectorates and irresponsible dictatorships." 

In a little more than a year afterwards, the last words became 
facts, Carrera, a mestizo, of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. 
had, years before, by the aid of his Indian allies, made himself 
Dictator of Guatemala; then turning his force against Cabanas, 
President of Honduras and chief of the Liberals, he placed Santos 
Ouardiola, another mestizo, in a dictatorship over that State. It 
is with this latter chieftain that the British Government has ne- 
gotiated its treaty, resigning the Bay Islands to the so-called 
Rcpubli<;, but still holding them under the "alien protectorate" 
of British institutions. I will read a single page from the lucid 
sketch given by Mr. Wells's book, which is, in fact, his report to 
the American merchants who employed him to examine the state 
of the country, in which they designed to prosecute their com- 
mercial enterprises. In this passage he makes an epitome which 
grasps the whole history. 

"It will be seen that the main cause of the devastating wars of Central America 
has been the division of the States into irreconcilable parties; one advocating the 
continuance of the obsolete forms of the Spanish viceroyalty, and the revival of the 
extinct aristocratical institutions of the colonial period; and the other, emulous of tlie 
astonishing progress of the United States under a purely republican government, 
vainly attempting to establish a similar system, and shedding their best blood in the 
thirty years' struggle to that end. 

" Of the patriotic motives of the Liberals, scarcely one among the few native and 
foreign writers upon the politics of Central America but pay a deserved tribute to their 
earnest exertions in behalf of their country. An English author includes in the 
Liberal party some few who had been distinguished men under the monarchy, the 
greater portions of the legal and medical professions, or, in other words, the elite of the 
University, who had preferred these studies to that of theology or canons, not so much 
as a means of support, as because they are almost the only careers open to those who 
reject the ecclesiastical vocation. ' It also numbered many merchants and landed pro- 
prietors, supported by a numerous body, composed of the more intelligent artisans and 
laborers. Their leaders were men of very decided democratical principles, of unques- 
tionable ability, and, considering the school they were brought up in, and the influ- 
ence that surrounded them, they manifested no small amount of true patriotism and 
devotedness to their convictions; though, alas! in too many instances, stained with 
venality, and even with deeds of oppression and blood. What they overthrew, and 
what they accomplished for the State, is honorable alike to their talents and their 
sentiments; and though the limits of a sketch will scarcely admit a due appreciation 
of it, a cursory view of their achievements, taking into consideration the circum- 
stances of the people and of the times, will probably excite more wonder, and cer- 
tainly merits higher praise, than the victories of Alvarado.' 

" Since Guardiola.'s usurpation of the supreme power in Honduras, the State has as- 
sumed a temporary importance abroad, by the arrangement of a treaty between its 
Government and that of Great Britain, by which the Central American question was 
finally settled, the Bay Islands restored to the Republic, and the British protectorate 
withdrawn from the Mosquito territory. The communication of SeSor Alvarado, Hon- 
duras's Minister to Great Britain, announcing to his Government the conclusion of the 
treaty, is dated London. September 15, 1856. The principal feature in the convention 
was the right accorded to the inhabitants of the Bay Islands to maintain their own 
municipal government, to be administered by legislative, executive, and judicial ofB- 



10 

cers, of their own election; trial by jury in their own courts; freedom of religious be- 
lief and worship, ijublic and private; exemption from military service, except for tbeii 
own defence; and from all taxation on real or other property, beyond such as may be 
imposed by their own municipality, and collected for the treasury of the same, and to 
be applied to the common benefit. 

"The stipulations concerning religious freedom and trial by jury are thus forced on 
Honduras, and furnish the germs from which these eminently Anglo-Saxon ideas must 
eventually spread to the main land. Under the Federal Ilepublic, the attempt to in- 
troduce this gave rise to the sanguinary conflicts between the authorities and the 
Indians, who then, as now, were incapable of appreciating its benefits. The privileges- 
thus accorded to an integral portion of the State afford the first instance of the estab- 
lishment in Central America of republican institutions, which are nol subject to over- 
throw at the caprice of temporary rulers." 

It seems that our American observer, standing on the spot — 
however averse to this Britisli intrusion — is obliged to admit that 
it afforded ^^ the Jirst instance of the establishment in Central America 
of republican institutions ivhich are not subject to cmerthrow at the 
caprice of temporary rulers." But what says our President in 
reference to tliis convention ? He revolts at it, because, (I read 
his words :) 

" Whilst declaring the Bay Islands to be a free territory, under the sovereignty of 
Honduras, it deprived that Republic of rights without which its sovereignty over them 
could scarcely be said to exist. It divided thenT from the remainder of Honduras, and 
gave to their inhabitants a separate Government of their own, with legislative, execu- 
tive, and judicial officers, elected by themselves. It deprived the Government of Hon- 
duras of the taxing power in every form, and exempted the people of the islands from 
the performance of military duty, except for their own exclusive defence. It also pro- 
hibited that Republic from erecting fortifications upon them for their protection ; thus 
leaving them open to invasion from every quarter; and, finally, it provided ^that slavery/ 
shall not at any lime hereafter be permitted to exist therein,^ " 

This last point is marked bj inverted commas in the message, 
by way of showing that he gives the exact words of the treaty in 
that clause, which crownis the climax of its obnoxious impositions. 
It is strange that our President, in his enumeration of the shocking 
guarantees wdth which England encumbered her surrender of the 
Bay Islands to the mercy of the dictator, omitted those which were 
closely associated with, and gave vitality to, that interdicting sla- 
very. They were the right (f habeas corpus, trial by jury, and free- 
dom of reliyious belief and ivorship. 

But Mr. Buchanan put his mark on that line of the treaty 
which excited so much abhorrence in that part of the Senate 
which was and is still laboring to force slavery on Kansas. He 
"sticks a pin there," and thus tells them, "I join you in making 
war upon the establishment of Anglo-Saxon institutions in any 
pairt of Central America, coupled with the exclusion of slavery, 
because they will frustrate the design we have formed and sent 
"Walker to execute," and wliich tliQ latter plainly avows in the 
following passage of a letter to one of his emissaries embarked 
with him in the enterprise. In his letter to Goicuria, sent by 
him as Minister to England, he says: 

"With your versatility, and, if I may use the term, adaptability, I expect much to be 
done in England. You can do more than any American could possibly accomplish, 
because you can make the British Cabinet see that we are not engaged in any scheme 
for annexation; you can make them see that the only ivay to cut the expanding and expan- 



11 

sine Dcmocnitji of the North, is by a powerful and compact Southern Federalion., based on 
military principles." 

Again he says: 

" Tell he must send me the news, and let me know whether 'Cuba must and 

shall be free,' but not for the Yankees. Oh! no! that fine country is not fit for those 
barbarous Yankees! What would such a psalm-siugfiug set do in the island?" 

Ill his letter to the Hon. C. J. Jenkins, of Georgia, Walker 
admits, that though he did not go to Central America to establish 
slavery, tliat measure was the guiding star of his policy after he 
readied there. He admits, too, that the decree issued with this 
object in view was his individual act, and that it was opposed 
by the whole body of native inhabitants. [Note E.} He asserts, 
also, that the measure was resorted to by him as part of a system 
for promoting "the increase of negro slavery on this continent." 

ISow, whether the President sent his fleet to Nicaragua to pro- 
tect that State from Walker's attempt, in compliance with tlie 
late treaty, or to make a cover for our national honor, ayid a cover 
for the aitcrprise endangered by another fleet hovering on thai coast, 
remains a problem. In one view, the policy contemplated l)y 
him is very clear. No man can look at the complexion of the 
t'abinet with which he is surrounded; at the hardy attempts of 
every branch of the Government to propagate slavery North and 
8outh ; at the manifest determination, both of the Senate and the 
late and the present President, to keep open the Central Ameri- 
can dispute with the British Government — making its treaty with 
Honduras for the exclusion of slavery from the Bay Islands the 
main difficulty — without seeing that there is a latent purpose of 
forcing slavery on that region against the will of a majority of the 
people of the Union, and making the Confederacy submit to a 
fragment of it, under the threat of flying off. 

The purpose of subjecting Central America to slavery has been 
boldly proclaimed ; and the opening of the African slave trade 
is relied upon to fill up the void in the laboring population which 
must be made by the war and the expulsion of dangerous classes. 
Is it not a degradation of the nation which stands on this conti- 
nent as the first asserter of its freedom and independence, and the 
great exemplar of popular sovereignty in the world, to have a 
Chief Magistrate and controlling councils harboring designs which 
they dare not avow, and seeking by sly intrigues to involve it in 
a war, to accomplish schemes which the people would spurn with 
disgust, if pronmlgated before they became committed in the 
conflict? I have no doubt my countrymen would regard with 
just indignation and resist an attempt by England to turn our 
flank on the Gulf of Mexico. That she spreads her dominion 
across this continent, from the Gulf of the St, Lawrence to Van- 
couver's Island on the Pacific, bringing its pressure to bear upon 
our whole Northern frontier, is as much restraint as can be en- 
dured. The nation would be willing to close this century as it 
began, in hostility with England, rather than submit to encroach- 
ment on our Southern quarter. For this reason, our Government 



12 

insisted that Great Britain should abandon the assumed protecfo- 
rate claimed over the coasts of Central America. She relinqnisliod 
it; but she stipulated with Honduras, that the subjects left by her 
in the Bay Islands should continue to enjoy the free institution? 
which she had planted there. Our own citizen, Mr. Wells, look- 
ing to the establishment of our influence through our institutions 
in this quarter, hails this step as "■ the establishment in Central Amer- 
ica of republican institutions, which are not to be overthrown at the 
caprice of temporary rulers." 

Can Mr. Buclianan summon hardihood to involve this country 
in a war to expel the freedom guarantied to the Bay Islands by 
the treaty made with the dictator Guardiola, and subject them to 
his absolute authority? I would rather hope that our Govern- 
ment, if not now, may yet, under another Presidency', extend its 
influence over the main land of Central America, by giving its 
support to maintain Governments there, based upon its own re- 
publican principles. To do this, we must, like England in the 
case of the Bay Islands, send our people into the country, p)roiect our 
merchants in their eyiterprisea there, and make an honest demonstration 
of the fixed purpose of our Government to build, up the prosperity of 
Central America for its own and our advantage. What could confer 
more honor on our national character than the acceptance of the 
proposal which the illustrious patriot Barrundia, as the last act 
of his life, submitted t^o our late President, speaking for Cabaiias 
and the wishes (as Mr. Wells and our diplomatic agent, Mr. Squier, 
give reason to believe) of the people of Honduras. Barrundia 
says : 

" She offers her commodious ports, her salubrious climate, and her great but uudo- 
veloped resources, to the aid of this undertaking, and freely offers her rich and fertile 
country to the enterprise and industry of the American people, Honduras should be 
forever the friend and sister of the United States, and she loolcs hopefully to the latter 
for tlie support of her liberty and independence. May the eternal Disposer of events 
link together the people of both by the unalterable tie of interest and future mutual 
prosperity." 

He concludes by repeating: 

" The earnest solicitude of Honduras to establish a true and intimate fraternity with 
the United States, in such form that both nations may have a single interest for tlie 
common cause of liberty, and in such manner that Honduras may proceed to develop 
her latent elements of prosperity, and to improve the advantage of a position eminently 
favored by nature, without a fear of disturbance for the future, either from civil discord 
or exterior aggression. Should such a fortunate result he attained^ Honduras will yet pre^- 
sent, in the centre of the commercial world, the glorious spectacle of a free and prosperous 
people, sustained hy the generosity of the great American Republic." 

To what a glorious and benevolent mission was our country 
called by this invocation of Barrundia, compared with those vile 
buccaneering expeditions set on foot by a body of filibustering 
malcontents among us, enemies alike of both Republics ! They 
want to set up a Government " under military rule.'' They want to 
be associated with the slave States, and exclude '■'■ the psahn-singing 
Yankees." They want to repeal the edict emancipating the slaves 
in the Central American States, and enslave them again. And 
can any one doubt whether these rapacious propagandists of sla- 



M 

very would hesitate, In case of success, to make themselves amends 
for their toils, suiierings, and dangers, somewhat as Cortez turned 
these conquests to account, acquired and held "by military 
rule?" 

Connected with this overture of Barrundia, on the part of Hon- 
duras, freely ottering "her rich and fertile countrj^ (rich in gold 
and every species of vegetation) to the enterprise and industry of 
the American people," in return for security from "civil discord 
and foreign aggression," was another, which addressed itself to 
the enterprising spirit of our great commercial cities. It was the 

frant of a charter conferring privileges of immense value, to be 
erived from the construction of an inter-oceanic railroad from 
the Atlantic bay of Honduras to the bay of Fonseca, on the Pa- 
cific. Mr. Wells glances at this when he arrives at Amapala. 
which he mentions as the projected "terminus of the Honduras 
inter-oceanic railroad, which, commencing on the Caribbean sea, 
is designed to pass through the beautiful valley of Comagua, a 
distance of one hundred and sixtj-'Cight miles, and with an aver- 
age grade, as the reports of the surveys of Mr. E. G. Squier state, 
of only twenty-eight feet to the mile." He continues : 

"While Panama and Nicaragua were early made the field of American enterprise 
for the establishment of an inter-oceanic communication, it is a little singular that 
speedier attention was not directed to this route to the Pacific, which is shorter than 
any other, not excepting that of Tehuantepec, and offers facilities for the construction 
of an inter-oceanic railroad, not exceeded by any other." 

He adds : 

"Extraordinary inducements are offered for the furtherance of this great enterprise; 
one of the principal of which is the existence of safe and capacious harbors at either 
terminus, (an advantage not possessed by the Tehuantepec route,) and the comparative 
small amount of grading and bridging to be done." 

In the following paragraph he describes the site of the intended 
terminus on the Pacific side : 

"The first impression on landing at Tigre Island (in the bay on the Pacific side) is its 
splendid facilities for fortification, and the formation of a great central commercial depot, 
from which to command the trade of the three States bordering on the bay of Fonseca. 
Its resources fully developed, Amapala might be made the most important port on the 
Pacific coast, south of San Francisco. In 1850, Mr. E. G. Squier, during his charge- 
ship, forwarded a series of dispatches to the United States Government, in which he 
advocated the advantages of entering into negotiations with Honduras for the estab- 
lishment of a naval station at Amapala. Should this plan be adopted, the yearly in- 
creasing means of communication between California and the Eastern States would 
soon place a United States squadron within seven days of Washington; with the con- 
struction of the contemplated Honduras railroad, and the appliances of telegrajjhs and 
steamers, Government orders of the most vital importance to the nation could reach 
our squadron iu the Pacific in three and a half days. The town is now the principal, 
or rather the only real port where large vessels or steamers may anchor and discharge, 
on the Pacific coast of the three Republics of Honduras, San Salvador, or Nicaragua." 

Our Presidents, of late years, have not been able to lift their 
vision to look beyond a President-nominating convention. With- 
out having rendered service of any sort to recommend them to 
the favor of the nation, these conventional aspirants rely on their 
location in the North, the skill in party tactics acquired bj' them 
as subalterns at the drill, and the cunning acquired in the intrigues 
necessary to give prominence to an eager ambition, without the 



14 

higher faculties to pi'omote it, fitted these men to hecome the 
instruments of a section, to defeat the sound, settled policy of the 
nation. Fillmore was too busy in making covert compliances to 
ingratiate himself with those pressing from the South to extend 
the area of slavery North and West, to listen to our Charge in 
Central America, when urging the expansion of our national 
greatness in a direction to have its just control over the continent 
and the oceans that washed its shores. Pierce was so sunk in 
submission to the plotters laboring to crush Kansas under slavery, 
that the overtures of Barrundia, which would have lifted a whole 
galaxy of independent States, with open bosom to welcome the 
enterprise and industry of our countrymen and the influence of 
our Government, were unheeded. The voice of an empire, ut- 
tered by its noblest patriot and statesman, its eloquent philoso- 
pher, the scholar who modelled its Governmentat'ter our own, fell 
upon his ears as "upon the dull, cold ear of death." But "the 
day of small things," of enslaved Presidents, of buccaneers, will 
pass away, and the nation of the New World will resume the at- 
titude which the moral grandeur of the great man who directed 
its aflairs for the first half century gave it. Then the time will 
come for a new movement on this continent, which will confer 
prosperity on three races of men. 

Mr. Chairman, it is evident to every man of thought, that the 
freed blacks hold a place in this country which cannot be main- 
tained. Those who have fled to the North are most unwelcome 
visiters. The strong repugnance of the free white laborer to be 
yoked with the negro refugee, breeds an enmity between races, 
which must end in the expulsion of the latter. Centuries could 
not reconcile the Spaniards to the Moors ; and although the latter 
were the most useful people in Spain, their expulsion was the 
only way to peace. In spite of all that reason or religion can 
urge, nature has put a badge upon the African, making amalga- 
mation revolting to our race. Centuries have shown that even 
the aboriginal race of this continent, although approaching our 
species in every respect more nearly, perish from contiguity with 
the white man. But I will not argue the point. The law of the 
North has put its ban upon immigration of negroes into the free 
States. 

In the South, causes more potent still make it impossible that 
the emancipated blacks can remain there. The multiplication 
of slaves and freed men of the same caste in the section where 
the dominant race must become proportionally fewer from emi- 
gration, has already compelled the latter to prohibit emancipation 
within the States, ajid to seek means of deliverance from the free 
blacks. The Northern States will not receive them ; the South- 
ern States dare not retain them. What is to be done ? What . 
was done with the native population which it was found incom- 
patible with the interests of Georgia, and the States southwest of 
the Ohio, and the States northwest, to indulge with homes within 
their limits? The United States held it to be a national duty to 



15 

puvcliase their lands from them, acquire homes for them iu othe." 
regions, and to hold out inducements and provide the means for 
their removal to them. Have not the negroes, horn on our soil, 
who have grown up among us, and although fated to beahurden 
and obstruction to our progress — yet always in amity and laboring 
to render service — equal claims upon us with the savages, against 
whom we have had to fight our way for centuries, resisting all 
attempts to bring them within the pale of civilization ? 

The President, in his late message, proposes to gather these 
savages in colonies, and at an early day raise them to the dignity 
of forming States, and assuming equality with the States of the 
Union. The Africans — bred and educated within civilized com- 
munities, who speak our language, are listeners at our canvasses, 
lookors-on at the elections, worshippers in our churches, and 
constantly witness the processes of improvement in our society, 
in the iicld, the workshop, and every domestic scene — one would 
think quite as capable of being disciplined in colonies, and fitted 
to take part in the Government of the Union, as the Shawnees, 
Pottawatomies, Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes, removed 
from the Northwest; or the Cherokecs, Choctaw^s, Creeks, and 
Seminoles, from the Soutlnvest. As far as respects the Sioux, 
Pawnees, Cheyennes, Utahs, Camanches, and Blackfeet, the 
President might have spared his recommendation until they were 
caught. I believe the people who constitute this Confederacy 
will forever scout the idea of blending either Indian or negro 
States with it. The aboriginal or imported tribes, which cannot 
amalgamate with our race, can never share in its Goverinnent iu 
equal sovereignties. Iu the benevolent design of colonizing the 
Indians, protecting and aiding their efibrts to gain a subsistence 
by cultivating the soil set apart for them, I most cordially concur; 
but I think, whatever form of society they may assume, they 
must always be held as dependencies; not put upon the footing 
of equality with the States. 

And ought not the Government to be equally provident for 
such portions of the unlbrtunate race born to slaver}-, but who, 
having attained freedom, find that it renders them a burden to 
those among whom they live — a burden that will not be borne? 
This is the question which absolute necessity now forces on the 
consideration of the country — one deeply atlecting the interests 
and feelings of slaveholders and non-slaveholders of the superior 
race, and of more than half a million already manumitted in- 
feriors, pressed down by their weight. 

The apparent evil which now produces so much anxiety and 
agitation here, I feel a firm conviction wnse counsels will over- 
rule for good. I believe that the removal from among us of 
such of the freed people of color as might be induced wdllingly 
to go to such parts of Central America as our Government could 
open to them and establish as a secure home, would be fraught 
with benefits to us, to the emigrants, to the people receiving 
them, and to all concerned in the commerce of this continent 



16 

within the tropics. I have ah'eacly quoted the account of a late 
visiter and most acute observer, sent to report on the condition 
of that country. lie confirms tlie general impression in regard 
to the ejfetc state of the Spanish race in Honduras and the other 
Central American States; the insurrectionary disposition of the 
Indians and mestizos of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, which 
produces incessant civil war and revolution; and he shows that 
the African race constitutes the basis on which some energetic 
and intelligent Power must build a stable structure of free gov- 
ernment. The negroes and mulattoes in Honduras number one 
hundred and forty thousand; the Indians one hundred thou- 
sand; the whites about fifty thousand; but of this caste he re- 
marks, that — 

"Iiidiscrimiuiite amalgamation has nearly obliterated the former distinction of caste, 
aud few families of pure Spanish descent arc known. Some of the wealthiest mer- 
chants of the department of Tegucigalpa are blacks, possessing a surprising degree of 
business tact. Two of the largest commercial houses have negro proprietors, whose 
mercantile relations extend to Europe, whence they import most of their goods. 
Though the great majority of the negroes of Honduras arc a thoroughly debased and 
ignorant class, there arc numerous exceptions. The Senate and Assembly have con- 
tained many highly-intelligent blacks and mulattoes, thoroughly educated in the Cen- 
tral American school of politics, and with sufficient discernment to foresee the decline 
of their own influence, and the power of the negro race, with the introduction of the 
Teutonic stock. Hence their violent opposition to foreign enterprises, in the national 
councils and in their private circles. The clergy are mostly negroes or mestizos. 
Their power for evil has been largely contracted since the independence; but, with a 
few exceptions, these men exercise rather a fovorable influence over the people, aud 
are generally respected." [Note F.] . 

Mr. Chairman, it is to this country, rich in mines, in every 
tropical production, aud open to our emigrants and to our com- 
merce through two great bays, one on the Pacific and the other 
on the Atlantic, and within three days' steaming of our own coast, 
that I would propose to form a settlement for such of our colored 
race, now free, or that may hereafter be freed, as might volunteer 
to establish it under the" auspices of our Government. And 
touching this most important policy, as calculated to deliver our 
Republi^c from the incubus wdiich threatens so much mischief, 
and to convert it into a means of so much good, I beg leave to 
take a lesson from the colonial policy of Great Britain, which 
received as a system its finished and most liberal form under the- 
late administration of Lord John Ilussell— Earl Grey presiding 
over the olfice of Secrerary of State for the Colonial Depai-tment. 
The whole system is developed in a masterly series of letters ad- 
dressed by the Earl to the Premier, which, with the history of 
the colonization tliat has girdled the world with Great Britain's 
dependencies, gives the reforms that make them adhere to the 
empire without force, and from a sense of mutual advantage em- 
braced in a common power and glory. The particular circum-- 
stance in that policy to which I would point the eye, is one which 
has uniformly characterized it: the transplantation of a better- 
informed people, imbued with the traits they wished to impress 
on the race they sought to subject to their infiuence. The exam- 
ple I adduce, as applicable to the scheme I would reccmimcnd, is 



17 

in Earl Grey's letter on Trinidad. Speaking of the various trans- 
plantations made for the improvement of Trinidad, he says : 

" Steps have also been taken, within the last two years, for procuring immigrants of afar more 
valuable description than those from India. 1 refer to the free black and colored inhabitants 
of the United States. These people are regarded as an encurnbrance, and their presence is 
considered a most serious evil in the States which they now inhabit, while there can be no 
doubt that many of them would be the best possible settlers who could be introduced into 
Trinidad. Speaking the English, with habits of industry and of civilized life, and well 
adapted by their constitution to the climate, there seems to be no reason to doubt the success 
of black and colored immigrants from the United Stales. Provided a proper selection is made 
of the individuals to be brought, their introduction could not fail to be of the highest value to 
the colony, not only from the actual accession of its population, which would be thus obtained, 
but from the example which they tcould afford to its present inhabitants. Such an addition 
to the existing population of Trinidad would have a tendency to raise the whole community 
in the scale of civilizatio7i ; whereas, there is precisely the opposite tendency with respect to 
immigraiion from almost any other quarter, and this is no slight drawback to the advantage 
to be obtained from it; " (that is, from the immigration from India.) 

Now, this element of strength and improvement, which English 
policy would allure to its West India possessions, I would allure 
to some congenial region on our own continent, with a view to 
their welfare, and to the extension of the influence and the com- 
merce of their native countrj^, the United JStates. I propose for 
imitation the example of the great pioneer nation in colonization. 
It has exhibited the elastic power of popular representative self- 
government, by which it has stretched (ireat Britain — though a 
mere selvage of the continent of Europe, saved from the grasp 
of its despots by a channel of the sea — around the world ; erect- 
ing an empire greater than the Roman, by the art of making and 
managing dependencies. Conquest over barbarous tribes, by 
naval and military force, was the first step in this great career. 
But when these tribes became nations, instructed in the arts of civ- 
ilization and skill in the use of arms — a progress urged on as neces- 
sary to the commerce, aggrandizement, and defence of England — 
they could no longer be held subjected by force, and the whole 
system lias been changed gradually into that wMch is in reality 
a confederacy, with Great Britain for its head, and her crown the 
symbol, drawing together the united powers of the whole. Earl 
Grey describes the principle of this great revolution as follows: 

"Keeping steailily in view that the welfare and civilization of the inhabitants of the 
colonies, and the advantage which the emijire at large may derive from their prosperity, 
are tlie only objects Ivr which the extension of these dependencies is desirable; and 
believing also that there can be no doubt as to the superiority of free Governments, to 
those of an opposite character, as instruments of promoting the advancement of com- 
munities, in which they can be made to work with success, I consider it to be the 
obvious duty and interest of this country to extend representative institutions to every 
one of its dependencies whero they have not been established, and where this can be 
done with safety." 

The late rebellion in Canada was the immediate cause of put- 
ting the colonies upon the footing of the mother country in the 
freedom of its institutions. The American Revolution had taught 
a lesson that was not lost. Earl Grey says: 

"The system now established in Canada is that of parliamentary government; that 

is to sfy, government by means of parties. This form of government is now working 

well in that and the neighboring provinces, and is probably, on the whole, the best 

plan hitherto adopted of enabling a colony, in an advanced stage of its social progress, 

2 



18 

to exercise the privilege of self-government. It may therefore be regnrded as the form 
which representative institutions, when they acquire their full development, are likely 
to take in the British colonies." 

Ill pursuance of this plan, when Lord Elgin was sent to Canada 
to give it practical effect, his instructions bore on their face the 
unqualitied declaration, that ^'- it cannot be too distinctly acknowltdgcd 
that it is neither possible nor desirable to carry on the govennnent of 
any of the British provinces in North America in opposition to the 
opinion of the inhabitants." This was a declaration of independ- 
ence by the Government, in advance of that contemplated by the 
people; and the consequence was, that the Keformers came into 
power in the Canadas, and, instead of persisting in the idea of 
annexation to the United States, they have become our rivals in 
progress, and hold their association with the renown and power 
of England as conferring advantages over us, from whom they are 
content to ask only a fair field for competition on this continent 
in a reciprocity treaty. 

This scheme of securing the allegiance of the nations Great 
Britain has in her train, by imparting to them the benefit of the 
free institutions she enjoys, has been carried out, in a greater or 
less degree, all over the world. In the West Indies, in defiance 
of the violent opposition of island aristocracies, (the lords of the 
soil,) the Government consulted the greatest good of the greatest 
number, and set free all the slaves; and, what was held to be 
equally disastrous, it struck ofi:' the fetters of monopoly, which, 
by means of difi'erential duties, gave the home market to the 
sugar planters without competition. This double act of emancipa- 
tion, tripled by the repeal of the navigation act, raised the cry of 
the privileged owners everywhere, that ruin was inevitable. Lord 
Grey shows the result in figures from the custom-house; and it 
appears that both in the West Indies and East Indies, comparing 
five years before with five years after the act of freedom, the in- 
crease of the sngar crops alone, in the last five years, under free 
labor and free competition, was 635,869 cwts. Mr. D'Israeli, who 
had been a Tory croaker against these reforms, afterwards, in a 
speech in Parliament, made the amende to Lord John Eussell, who 
was their author. After comparing results in detail, he lumps 
the matter, and says: 

"In other words, British production has increased by 1,250,000 cwts., and foreign 
production (that is, slave-grown sugar) has decreased about 600,000 cwts. I may be 
called a traitor, I may be called a renegade; but I want to know wlicther there is any 
gentleman in this House, wherever he may sit, who would recommend a differential duty 
to prop up a prostrate industry which is already commanding the metropolitan market." 

The same system of assimilating the provincial institutions to 
the British has been pursued in the cannibal island of New Zeal- 
and, and brought to bear successfully on that warlike and power- 
ful race, said to be superior to our Shawnees in bravery and in- 
telligence. The}' have been trained into stone masons, road 
builders, farmers, and traders, municipal officers, and legislators, 
by the elective and representative rights conceded to them under 
the instruction and assistance of the English authority. 



19 

111 Australia, once the land of convicts, the experiment works 
welh There parliamentary tactics are plied, and we hear of de- 
bates ending in the expulsion of a ministry who fail to meet the 
public expectation. It is now a land of gold, of herds, of 
agriculture, of commerce, of busy cities iilled with reiinement. 
Earl Grey tells us that in 1850 a census was taken of one 
element of this prosperity: "Of persons who had originally been 
prisoners, who were actually in the enjoyment either of entire 
freedom, or that degree of freedom conferred by conditional par- 
Jon — the result of the investigation was to show that of such 
persons in these colonies there could not have been less than 
forty-eight thousand; and out of this large number, those who 
were not, in some way or other, maintaining themselves honestly, 
either by their labor or the property they had acquired, were so 
few that they formed a mere fraction of the whole." 

The Secretary goes on to account for this by ascribing it to the 
salutary ettect oftransplantation; to change of scene, of society 
and habits, removal from temptation, and being forced by neces- 
sity to labor where wages were tempting, in the field or in tend- 
ing herds, and having the opportunity to form a new character 
among a new people. Another obvious cause of this reforma- 
tion, well understood in this country, is found in the ease of 
Acquiring homesteads in the crown lands of Australia. To pro- 
mote this, regulations were adopted, as Earl Grey expresses it, 
" with a view of insuring the distribution of land to those by 
whom it was wanted ; " "since," as he adds, "there is no such 
fatal obstacle to the progress of a colony as having a large pro- 
portion of its lands engrossed by persons who make little use of 
the estates they acquired." This was eflected by selling to set- 
tlers at the minimum price, and then providing that "the money 
received for the land may be so laid out that the bona fide settler 
ma}'^ receive, in the increased value for occupation of the land he 
buys, full compensation for the price he is required to pay for it;" 
and he adds, that it is "an essential part of the policy which 
ought to be pursued with regard to the alienation of land, that 
the proceeds of the land sales should be always so applied as to 
give this advantage to the purchaser." This is almost a home- 
stead bill; for it gives back the price of the land, received in 
one hand, by paying it for the improvement of it with the other 
hand. 

I have drawn thus largely on Secretary Grey's explanation of 
the colonial policy of Lord John Eussell's administration, to point 
the eye of our Government to the causes of that success which is 
now the Avonder of the world. India alone gives trouble; and 
that, doubtless, is attributable to the fact, that it has always been 
in the hands of a monopolizing company, which has had the 
right, and exerted it, to exclude Englishmen and English insti- 
tutions, according to its pleasure, out of the provinces, wdiich 
have been kept, for the company's benefit, in the hands of pen- 
sioned nabobs. Lord Palmerston has already given notice of a 



20 

bill which probably will place India in the nation's keeping. 
[Note G.] 

The position which things are taking on the shores of Central 
America indicates a rivahw between England and the United 
States, as to the Power which is to exert the command over that 
region; to people it, civilize it, give it peace; in a word, make 
it in some sort a dependency — the only mode of saving it from 
barbarism, and from becoming a nuisance. The British Govern- 
ment has sent its subjects— free colored persons, Jamaica negroes — 
into the logwood and mahogany cuttings in Honduras, and into 
the Bay Islands, where she claimed a protectorate. She has re- 
stored the latter to the Government on the main land, stipulating 
that all the rights that make freemen Qf the people of England or 
in the United States, shall be held under a sacred guarantee. Mr. 
Buchanan says, in his late message, that this security, taken for 
the people of the Bay Islands, is'the establishment of "a State, 
nt all times subject to British influence and control." And how 
would he prevent it? By stripping off the civil rights the people 
enjoy, and subjecting them to a dictator? lie especially objects 
to their having "legislative, executive, and judicial oflicers, elected 
by themselves ; of being exempt from the taxing power in every 
form," against the consent of their representatives; "tlie per- 
formance of military service, except for their own exclusive de- 
fence;" but, above all, he holds the provision, "that slavery shall 
not at any time hereafter be permitted to exist therein," to be the 
most obnoxious. 

Now, I do not believe that the people of the United States will 
allow Mr. Buchanan to was-e a war against Great Britain to estab- 
lish slavery in the Bay Islands, any more than they will allow him 
TO establish it in Kansas by force of arms. Nor will they coun- 
tenance his hostility to freedom of religious belief in the Bay 
Islands, nor to the elective tranchise, nor trial by jury, nor the 
right of habeas corpus, nor of voting the taxes to be imposed on 
them, and providing exclusivel}- for their own military defence. 
It is a scandal to the age, that an American President objects to 
the guarantee of the American bill of rights, to secure the free- 
dom of any people. 

Instead of opposing, I think we should follow the example of 
England, and carry to the main land of Central America such of 
our free colored population as may be willing to go, upon the 
invitation of the Liberal party in that country, and extend our 
guarantee of freedom over them and the whole section of country 
which our Government may acquire, by purchase, for their re- 
ception. [Note II.] There is a necessity that some great civd- 
ized Power should step in, to restore order and industry, under 
the guarantee of free and stable institutions. England tenders 
the security of her crown, and the best usages that have ever 
grown up under a crown. We should oft'er the support of our 
Constitution, and the earnest of prosperous freedom which it has 
assured to our Northern Republic. Which they would choose, 



21 

the Soutlieni Republics have already evinced, in the forms they 
have adopted; and the encroachments of our transatlantic breth- 
ren would never have been attempted, but for the departures 
manifested in late movements from the principles of the founders 
of oar Government. While Great Britain has been breaking 
down slavery and monopoly in the West Indies, the hand that 
has been felt from this quarter was that of the filibuster. Cuba 
was ready to Hy to the embraces of the United States, when she 
was repelled by two successive lawless expeditions, unmistakably 
marked by the features of the buccaneers who ravaged that island 
of old. 

And what have been the concomitants of Gen. Walker's inva- 
sion ? A proclamation, revoking the constitutional decree deliv- 
ering the greatest mass of the people from slavery ; and the prin- 
ciple thus manifested was fitly illustrated by military executions, 
butcheries in the streets of the cities, and, lastly, by the confla- 
gration of one of the oldest. These atrocities had the eftect of 
uniting the people of these distracted States, at last, in one com- 
mon object — the expulson of the oppressor. Happily for the fame 
of our country, the renewal of this horrible enterprise has been 
thoroughly rebuked by the patriotism, courage, and decision, of 
Commodore Paulding. The name has acquired a new lustre, to 
emblazon that which" it inherits from the Revolution, If the 
Commodore's act had the sanction of the Administration in ad- 
vance, or shall receive it now, some proof will be given that it is 
not altogether degenerate, and much will have been done to re- 
move from us the aversion, the want of confidence in the justice 
of this Republic, and the fear that it countenances a design to fix a 
yoke on Central America, instead of rescuing it from usurpation — 
results to be hailed as tending to fit our Government for the 
relation it should hold towards the Republics of this continent. 

If, on the other hand, the Administration takes part with 
Walker, and the faction in this country that support him, it will 
show to all the world that the scheme for the propagation of 
slavery by the sword, of which it has given strong indications in 
Kansas, is extended to the whole regions of the South. Such a 
scheme can never succeed, unless the principle avowed as the 
basis of it, by AYalker, shall prevail. The triumph of '■'■ military 
rule" over civil institutions in the slave States, and their separa- 
tion from the free States, North and West, must be won as the 
first step to conquest ; and then, as the next step, the whole power 
of the free Republics on this side of the Atlantic, and the hostile 
feeling, if not the direct force of Europe, must be encountered. 
The connection of the Atchisou-Kansas conspiracy with that of 
Walker's against Central America is visible in the instruments 
who put them in motion. The same men, Xorth and South, en- 
courage both. Funds were raised for them in the same quarters; 
and such men as Colonel Titus are seen to emerge at one time in 
Kansas, at another in Nicaragua. The masses of the people, nor 
their elevated statesmen, neither of the North nor South, of the 



22 

East or "West, not even the great body of the slave-owners, luive 
any heart in the propagation of- slavery. Apart from the politi- 
cians, who use the question for their own advancement, the design 
has no snpport but in the enemies of the Union, who hate free 
government, from the bitterness of their hearts, or from a vanity 
thej? would dignify as aristocratic pride. 

In my opinion, the propagation of slavery can only be success- 
fully resisted by the propagation of freedom. It is tliis mission, 
arrogated by Great Britain as peculiarly hers, which has con- 
ferred on her the preponderance she holds in almost every portion 
of the earth. She has swayed it with an iron hand, but every- 
where of late years Anglo-Saxon justice, civilization, and Chris- 
tianity, wherever they prevailed, have allowed every man to feel 
the comfort of laboring for himself, and he has labored all the 
better for his country. 

Great Britain has her hands full in christianizing, civilizing, 
and improving, for commercial usefulness, the old continents. 
She must leave to us the regeneration of the new one ; and this 
I tind, from a paper in a late Westminster Review, marked by 
the editor with an unusual notiiication, ascribing it to ^' an able 
and distinguished contributor,'' seems to be the opinion of some of 
the great men of England. This eloquent writer, describing the 
missions of what he calls "the four Empires," Russia, France, 
Great Britain, and the United States, assigns its office to the 
latter in the following passage : 

"And it may once for all be assumed, that the human race, whatever Cabinets or 
Parliaments may think of it, will not be driven from their inevitable course. The 
work which has begun so largely will go forward. The Asiatic independence which 
survives will narrow down and grow feebler, and at last die. The will and the intel- 
lect of the more advanced races will rule in due time over that whole continent. The 
genius of France will follow the shores of the Mediterranean ; the line of kingdoms 
Avhioh divides the empires of England and Russia will grow thinner, till their frontiers 
touch. In spite of Clayton-Bulwer treaties, and Dallas-Clarendon interpretations of 
them, the United States will stretch their shadow ever further south. Revolution will 
cease to tear the empire of Montezuma. The falling Republics of Central America 
will not forever be a temptation, by their weakness, to the attacks of lawless ruflians. 
The valley of the mighty Amazon, which would grow corn enough to feed a thousand 
million mouths, must fall at last to those who will force it to jield its treasures. The 
ships which carry the commerce of America into the Pacific, carry, too, American jus- 
tice, and American cannon as the preachers of it. The Emperor of Japan suj)posed, 
that by Divine right, doing as he would with his own, he might close his country 
against his kind ; that when vessels in distress were driven into his ports, he might 
seize their crews as slaves, or kill them as unlicensed trespassers. An armed squad- 
ron, with the star-spangled banner flying, found its way into the Japan M'aters, and 
his serene Majesty was instructed that in nature's statute-book there is no right con- 
ferred on any man to act unrighteously, because it is his pleasure; that, in their own 
time, and by their own means, the upper Powers will compel him, whether he pleases 
or not, to bring his customs into conformity with wiser usage." 

The starting point in this new career is the resumption of the 
progress which received its impulse in the revolution tending to 
the deliverance of the white laboring class of this country from 
the superincumbent weight of African slavery. This redemption 
of our own race from its vassalage under slavery has been brought 
to a stand-still, and six millions of our free white kindred endure 
deprivation, corporeal and intellectual, from the slave occupation 



23 

of the soil, and of the pursuits which would add to their means of 
living and their sources of mental iniprovement. Xoitlier the 
slave-owners nor the slave States are responsible for the arrest 
of the enfranchisement which promised blessings to the toilers of 
both races. For, whether as a slave or free man, the presence ot 
multitudes of the black race is found to be fatal to the interests 
of our race ; their antagonism is as strong as that of oil and water ; 
and so long as no convenient outlet, through which the manu- 
mitted slave can reach a congenial climate and country, willing 
to receive him, is afforded, the institution of slavery stands on 
compulsion. But let me suppose Central America — tempting in 
gold and every production of tlie tropical soil, to stimulate exer- 
tion, with a climate innoxious only to the black man — were 
opened up to him, under circumstances to advance him in the 
scale of humanity, how long before masters in all the temperate 
slave States would make compositions to liberate them on terms 
that would indemnify them for transplantation ? [Xote I.] 
Hundreds of more benevolent owners would, from a sense of 
public good and for conscience sake, by wills, or by deeds of 
emancipation, make this deliverance, if the General Government 
would take the charge of the deportation to the region it might 
acquire for tliem — a gradual and voluntary emancij^ation by in- 
dividuals, if not by States, would thus in time be accomplished. 
I hold that it is the duty of the nation to offer this boon to slave- 
holders and to the slave States, to enable them to have complete 
control of the subject, which is the source of so much anxietv 
and mischief to them. 

What a change would soon be wrought in the condition of 
Maryland and Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, and in my 
own State, Missouri, if a smooth way were opened into the heart 
of the tropics — prodigal of wealth in the soil, in the mines, and 
in the forests; where the labor of the robust and skillful freed- 
man, assisted by the capital and instruction, and inspired by the 
energy of enterprising American merchants, miners, or planters, 
would start everything into life. The mixed condition of the 
four different classes which, in our grain-growing States, obstruct 
each other; the masters dependent on the slaves, the slaves on 
their masters; the free negroes hanging on the skirts of both; 
while the great mass, the free white laborers, are cast out, in a 
great measure, from employment and all ownership in the soil, 
would be succeeded by the most useful of all the tillers of the 
earth, small freeholders and an independent tenantry. The in- 
flux of immigrants from Europe and the North, with moderate 
capital, already running into Maryland and Virginia, would, as 
these States sloughed the black skin, fill up the rich region 
around the Chesapeake bay, the noblest bay in the world, fed by 
the most beautiful rivers, and brooded over by the most genial 
climate, and make it fulfill the prediction of Washington, who 
said, slavery abolished, it would become "the garden of America." 
The wilderness shores of the great inland sea, now almost as silent 



24 

as in the days of Powhatan, would be alive with population; and 
the waters, now covered with swans, wild geese, and wild ducks, 
would be covered with sails, and kept in commotion by the rush 
of steamers over them. [Note K.] The great rivers that run to 
waste over many latitudes of the healthful temperate zone would 
thunder with machiner}', and the little Merrimac in Massachu- 
setts, which, though frozen half the ye.ar, produces ninety millions 
of manufactures, would find more than a hundred rivals in giant 
streams which are precipitated in the Chesapeake. The moun- 
tains would give to the hand of free labor boundless wealth, in 
coal, salt, and ores, and their surface in pasturing innumerable 
herds and flocks. The plains and valleys would teem with grain, 
the lowlands with meadow, and the Old Dominion, instead of 
being "the lone mother of dead empires," would resume her 
hereditary crown and nascent strength, imparting new growth to 
all her oftspring States. The noble ambition which once led the 
way to pre-eminence in this great Confederacy must again be at- 
tained by a love of liberty, by love of justice, by a magnanimous 
patriotism, prompt to make any sacrifice of temporary conve- 
nience for the great moral and political principles, the founda- 
tion of free institutions. The attempt to enforce slavery in Kan- 
sas and Central America by the sword, and thus make the whole 
intermediate space on the continent fall under its ascendency, 
will fail. There is no Mohammed to establish such a dominion; 
nor is this age, the age of Christian strength and popular power, 
one to succumb to slavery propagandist prophets. Indeed, the 
Moslems all over the world have fallen so low, under the infiu- 
ence of this part of their creed, that they are obliged to surrender, 
and take the law from the accursed nations they stigmatize as 
Franks. The civilized world is at war with the propagation of 
slavery, whether by fraud or by the sword; and those who look 
to gain political ascendency on this continent by bringing the 
weight of this system, like an enormous yoke, not to subject the 
slaves only, but also their fellow-citizens and kindred of the same 
blood, have made false auguries of the signs of the times. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTE A. 

Extract from a paper by Lieut. M. F. Maury, U. S. Navy, entitled " The Valley of the 

Amazon." 

" The policy of Commerce, and not the policy of Conquest," says Maury, " is the 
policy of the United States." He adds, " The country that is drained by the Amazon, 
if reclaimed from the savage, the wild beast, and the reptile, and reduced to cultiva- 
tion now, would be capable of supplying with its produce the population of the whole 
world." 

The following article, from the New York Tribune, published in June or July last, 
shows that its able conductors fully appreciate the vast extent of the intertropical 
region, and the means by which alone it can be made useful. This brief article con- 
tains the germ of all that I have advanced : 

" The newspaper lately established at Richmond, which, by way of indicating, we 
suppose, its ultra devotion to Southern opinions and support of Southern interests, 
has taken to itself the name of The South, though on many points its information 
seems to lag a quarter of a century or more behind the times, yet in one particular 
does come up to the tide-mark of current information. That journal seems to be fully 
aware of the very important part which the negroes of the tropics are to play in the 
future progress of commerce and civilization, and to be very jealous of the ascendency 
which Great Britain is acquiring in those regions. 

" It is an unquestionable fact, not only that the torrid zone embraces an extent of 
territory capable of cultivation far exceeding that of all the rest of the world put 
together, but also that the resources of this wealthy region — including on the Western 
Continent vast tracts of territory remaining as yet in a state of nature — have hardly 
as yet begun to be developed. 

" The first great requisite for the extensien of civilization and of the ideas and iu" 
dustry of enlightened Europe and North America into these regions, is to find a body 
of men to be the apostles and disseminators of these ideas, able to withstand the cli- 
mate. The extension of the Caucasian race, so called, into these climates, to displace 
the present inhabitants, or to fill up the countries now uninhabited, must be given up 
as not feasible. Within the torrid zone, except upon high table-lands brought by their 
elevation above the ocean level into the range of temperate climates, the Caucasian 
race connot for any length of time propagate itself. It is only in these exceptional 
regions that even the Spanish colonists of the two Americas, though drawn from a 
semi-tropical climate, have been able to increase or even to maintain their numbers. 
Throughout the West India Islands, if we except Cuba, into which a very recent flood 
of white emigration on a large scale has been poured, the whites, in spite of constant 
accessions from Europe, have been unnble to keep up their numbers. 

" The negro race, on the contrarj^, is perfectly well adapted to this tropical climate, 
and luxuriates in it; and it is through the agency of negro labor, and exclusively 
through that agency, that some small part of the American portion of the torrid zone 
has been hitherto brought withm the circle of civilized industry. Of this negro race, 
seemingly predestined by Provraence, after contact with the Caucasian races, to a 
higher development, a very large section is under the immediate tuition and influence 
of the people of the United States. 

" Already as much Christians as ourselves, year after year they adopt more and 
more our ideas, language, habits. 

" Now, it is obvious that in this great body of civilized negroes, we have, if we did 
but know how to use them, and were willing to do so, a most powerful and essential 
instrument toward extending ourselves, as it were — our ideas, our civilization, our 



26 

commerce, industry, and political institutions— through all the American torrid zone. 
Instead, however, of making the most of this great instrumentality toward bringing 
within our grasp these vast regions upon which we have fixed such covetous glances, 
we set to work, as it were, to cut off our own fingers. 

" And what makes our policy in this matter the more absurd and suicidal is, that 
Great Britain, of whose designs upon the tropics The South evinces so great a jealousy, 
has adopted precisely the opposite course. She, too, has, in her West India colonies 
and elsewhere, a considerable section of the negro race under her immediate control; 
and, as if well aware of the great field which the uninhabited tropical regions present, 
and of the impossibility of occupying that field except through negro agency, she has 
set herself zealously to work by liberating and educating the negroes, and by acknowl- 
edging those under her jurisdiction as British subjects, with all the rights and privi- 
leges of Englishmen, to create for herself a body of black Englishmen, Mho, along witk 
the education, intelligence, skill, self-esteem, self-reliance, and English ideas generally, 
of their white fellow-subjects, will possess also the capacity of enduring tropical cli- 
mates, such as does not belong to the races of the temperate zones. " 

NOTE B. 
Suppression of the African Slave Trade. 

The London Times, speaking of the immense efforts made by all the civilized nations 
of the earth to suppress the African Slave Trade, and lamenting the want of success 
that has attended tliese efforts, concludes that the weak point in the policy for its sup- 
pression was the failure to supply other labor by which the demand for tropical pro- 
ductions might have been met. It says : 

" Instead of facilitating the introduction of some substitute for the labor abstracted, 
we regarded with the utmost jealousy every effort directed to this end, and were so 
nervously apprehensive about the continuance of Slavery under any kind of disguise, 
that we placed a kind of prohibition upon any labor whatever. That such a state of 
tilings was perfectly incompatible with tranquillit}', content, or good faith in the exe- 
cution of agreements, the smallest knowledge of human nature should have suflSced 
to teach us. We had left a large class of agriculturists, hitherto engaged in remu- 
nerative production, without the means by which such production could be carried on. 
We wanted sugar, coffee, rice, and other tropical exports, in constantly increasing 
quantities;' and what, then, were planters to do? Naturally, they struggled as hard 
as they could against the interdict which had been issued. In the West Indies, being 
British territories, they had no chance, and when^ few schemes of apprenticeship, &c., 
had been tried and failed, the worst actually came to the worst, and estates went out 
of cultivation altogether. In other countries, the Governments, as was to be antici- 
pated, reflected, as far they could venture to do so, the dissatisfaction of their subjects, 
and strove, with more or less success, to leave loopholes for a traffic which they were 
solemnly engaged to put down. Bad as the Slave Trade had always been, a contra- 
band Slave Trade proved something worse than ever. The horrors of the middle pas- 
sage were doubled, through the expedients adopted to avoid cruisers. At length, after 
forty years of incessant efforts, measures of repression have so far succeeded, that ninc- 
tenths of the contraband traffic may be considered as stopped; but under what condi- 
tion? Why, the whole gist of the debate on Thursday evening was, that our success 
■was only just commensurate with our coercion; that as long as we held the screw 
tight, we might reckon on security, but no longer; that the Slave Trade, as Lord Pal- 
merston phrased it, was 'not extinguished in the hearts' of the planters; and that, in 
point of fact, we were just where we used to be, except in so far as violence, or threats 
of violence, had produced, not abandonment, but suspension of wrong. 

" Who can wonder at this? or who can expect that such ideas will cease until a sub- 
stitute has been found for something which was indispensable, and which has been 
taken away? Here is the weak point of our policy. Instead of endeavoring to destroy 
the hankering after slaves by the importation of more lawful labor, we merely abolish 
one agency, without thinking about another. We intercepted a supply, but left an active 
and powerful demand — a demand which we ourselves concurred in stimulating. As a 
matter of calculation, indeed, slave labor is not cheap labor, but, as we left things, it 
was that or none; so that the impulse of evil habits conspired with necessity itself iu 
keeping people on the wrong track. To make the abolition of the Slave Trade an ac- 
complished and accepted fact, slaves should have been rendered useless in the planta- 
tions, and therefore worthless in the market. If jjopulation was to find its level and 
labor its price, this could be done as well by importing freemen as bondsmen." 

If the Slave Trade can be stopped, and the wars to Avhich it gives rise put an end 
to, it may be possible to civilize Africa. If tlie demand for tropical productions cau 



27 

be supplied by free labor in the American tropics, the colonies planted in Africa may- 
become successful, and in no other way. 

NOTE C. 

A Mexican newspaper, the Exlraordinurij, refers to the immigration into the State 
of Vera Cruz, of a number of free blacks from Louisiana. It says : 

" Some time since, a small party of negroes from Louisiana found their way to Mex- 
ico, and settled to the south of Vera L'ruz, on the Fopoloapam. They turned their 
attention to the cultivation of Indian corn, and were so successful that they wrote to 
their friends in New Orleans, telling them of the great advantages held out to them ia 
Mexico. Their chances for making money were here much greater than in the United 
States, and, what was to be jirized still more by the blacks, they were not here sub- 
jected to the same inequality from caste as they were in their old homes. 

" The representations of these pioneers have been successful in inducing a large 
number to immigrate. Not long since, we noticed the arrival of a party of forty, who 
have come with practical knowledge, strength, and money, to carry on agricultural 
pursuits to advantage, and our advices are that they are setting to work with all that 
energy and spirit Avhich characterize the people from whom they have received their 
instruction." 

NOTE D. 
Reducing Free Negroes to Bondage. 

Proofs might be multiplied ad infinitum^ to show that such a design is entertained 
by many intiuential persons at the South. A few extracts from leading Southern 
journals is all for which I have place; but these extracts show very clearly the design 
and the means by which it is sought to be accomplished. A correspondent of the 
South Side Democrat, published at Petersburg, Va., says : 

" Something should be done by our next Legislature to better the condition of this 
unfortunate class, as well as to relieve ourselves of their presence. Every day fur- 
nishes us with additional materials of proof to convince us that the free negro and the 
slave should not exist in the same community. * * * j believe slavery to be, as I 
have heard it expressed, 'a moral, political, and social good' — a blessing both to the 
black and the white man. * * * Give every such negro a reasonable time to 
leave the State. If it is his choice to remain, let him be appraised and sold at a cer- 
tain per cent, under valuation, permitting him to choose his master, provided the 
amount required be paid for him. * * * If there is any odium attached to this 
system of ridding ourselves of the greatest nuisance in our land, there is odium at- 
tached to slavery itself; for, if slaver}' is right, it is right for us to enslave those whose 
condition will be improved thereby." 

A meeting of the citizens of King and Queen county, Va., adopted a petition to the 
Legislature, which, after reciting that free negroes were the worst class of their popu- 
lation, &c., <S>c., concludes thus: '-We therefore petition your honorable bod}' to adopt 
some measures by which the State may be freed from this hinderance to her peace 
aijd comfort." 

The Richmond Examiner, commenting on this petition, says: "If he refuses to im- 
migrate to the more hospitable North, there is no alternative left, under the reasoning 
in the premises, but to sell the free negro into slavery." 

NOTE E. 

The Cause of Walker's Failure in Central America. 

The fact stated by Walker, in his letter to the Hon. Mr. Jenkins, of Ga., that his 
proclamation revoking the decree of freedom in Nicaragua was opposed by the whole 
body of native inhabitants, sufficiently accounts for his overthrow, llow could he 
expect to sustain himself, when opposed by the wliole body of the native inhabitants? 
The cause of their opposition was well founded, because the great mass of the people 
belong to the colored races, and they justly apprehended, that if slavery was re-estab- 
lished in Nicaragua, they would be enslaved. I have been assured by a gentleman 
who has resided long in Central America, and who was there when Walker was per- 
suaded by Pierre Soule to revoke the decree of freedom, (assuring him that it was the 
only way in which he could secure the countenance and aid of the fifteen slave States 
in this Union, and of the Southern politicians who then and now dominate in this 
Government,) that this act was the cause of his being driven out of the country, and 
that he, being interested in tlie cotintry. endeavored to dissuade Walker against the 
act, by warning him of its consequences. 



28 

NOTE F. 
The Effect of the Climate of the Tropics on the White Race. 

Lieut. Maury, in his paper on the "Valley of the Amazon," from which I have 
already quoted, says: "For more than three hundred years, the white man has been 
established in that Amazonian basin, and for more than three hundred years it has 
remained a howling wilderness." To the same effect speaks the correspondent of the 
New York Courier andiEnquirer. He says, under date July 23, 1857: 

" But the great consideration is that which men appear resolved to conceal from 
themselves. It is, that this negro race must necessarily take possession of the tropical 
regions on this continent and the islands adjacent, to which they may be transported. 
They will expel the whites by the same law of nature which has given the blacks ex- 
clusive possession of corresponding latitudes in Africa. The white man has not been 
able to supplant and absorb even the Indians of the tropics. From the borders of 
Mexico to the south line of Brazil, the Indian remains the prevailing type of mankind. 
And it is the negro and his mongrel modifications which are gaining upon the copper- 
colered." 

The same writer thus opens the question which I have ventured to bring before 
Congress : 

" In the eventualities of the future, we may hope that the Southern States of our 
Union may desire to relieve themselves of the pressure of slavery. In that case, the 
West Indies and the northern portion of South America will be the natural and (it 
receptacle of their freedmen. It is therefore of the highest importance that these 
regions should be kept open for that contingency." 

NOTE G. 
What is the best plan for extending the influence of our Government over the Intertrojncal 
Regions of this Continent. 
I have, in the remarks made in the House of Representatives, endeavored, as well as 
the limited time allowed would permit, to sketch the policy of Great Britain in acquir- 
ing and holding her colonies, and held it up as a model for the imitation of our Gov- 
ernment; and I would refer those who wish to understand that policy, to the mas- 
terly exposition of Earl Grey, in his letters to Lord John Russell, from which I have 
quoted so liberally. The principle of self-government, because it is the best govern- 
ment, is the foundation of the system, and this should especially recommend it to the 
people of our Republic. But this principle is modified to suit the circumstances of the 
various races over whom England holds sway, and the practical wisdom of her states- 
men is illustrated by the peculiar tact with which they have succeeded in adapting 
this principle to the conditions of the various races over whom they desire to extend 
their influence. An example is found in the Government established on the Gold 
Coast of Africa, where the various tribes of negroes have been induced to form a sort 
of representative confederacy of the simplest and most primitive kind, around a " Facto- 
ry," as it is called, established by British merchants. The object of these merchants is 
of course to extend their trade and enrich themselves, and the best method of accom- 
plishing this object is found to be in maintaining peace among the different tribes of 
negroes, and, instead of killing each other, turning their energies to the production 
of articles of commerce; and thus the rude negro is turned to account, and made to 
swell the wealth and power of Great Britain by the same process which confers bless- 
ings upon himself, and lifts him in the scale of humanity. This is certainly better 
than exterminating the negro, and robbing him of the little he possesses, because he is 
not the equal of the white man. The intertropical regions of America contain nearly 
twenty millions of people, of whom less than three millions are of pure white extrac- 
tion. The seventeen millions of people belonging to the colored races are capable of 
producing a vast amount of wealth by their labor. The more these peojile are in- 
structed and improved, the greater will be their capacity for production. Is it good 
policy to instruct and improve these jteople, and profit by their greater capacity for 
the production of wealth, whilst conferring benefits upon them? or shall we enslave 
them, or let others enslave them, and thus still further debase them and destroy their 
usefulness to themselves and to us ? The elevated plateaus of the intertropical regions 
are perfectly healthy for the white race, and well adapted for the occupancy of that 
intelligent and vigorous people, so capable of directing and maintaining stable govern- 
ments, whicli is the chief want of the people of the colored race. But they would them- 
selves need to be sustained — and perhaps restrained by the arm of this Government — 
just as England does those who represent her power and guide the afl'airs of the mil- 
lions who own her sway. Probably the best method of starting in this career would 
be by private enterprise, peaceful emigration; but no company is capable of governing 



29 

a V untry; that has been often tried, and has as often proved a failure. It grows into 
a monopoly, and destroys itself by ruining the country. This is the history of the 
Dutch East India Company, and the calamity Avhich the British East India Company 
has just brought upon itself and the one hundred and fifty millions of people over 
whom it has tyrannized so long, can never be forgotten. It will probably forever pre- 
vent the establishment of another soulless corporation for the government of another 
nation. Whilst, therefore, the pioneers of this new policy, which events are now press- 
ing upon our adoption, will be the individuals or companies of individuals who go 
forth, seeking their own profit, it will be necessary for our Government to step forward 
and assume the control, and give to all the people, who have been thus prepared by 
our missionaries, a government conforming as nearly to the standard of our institu- 
tions as the nature of a dependency and their own condition of improvement will 
permit. The enfranchised slaves of this country, under the guidance of men of our 
race, will undoubtedly form the very best instruments for extending our influence 
over their kindred races of the tropics, and we shall prove ourselves wanting in wis- 
dom if we fail to make use of this instrumentality which has already given Great 
Britain such preponderance in the tropics of our own continent. As already shown, 
the great mass of the inhabitants of the intertropical regions belong to the colored 
races, they have, from causes not necessary to be mentioned here, imbibed sentiments 
of fear and hatred to our race. And to those already engaged in enterprises upon the 
Isthmus, and who have invested millions in the transit routes at Panama and in 
Nicaragua, and those who propose to invest in the Honduras InTer-Oceanic railroad 
and the Tehuantepec route, the suggestion of the employment of our freed negroes, 
against whom there is no bitterness, and who can better endure exposure in that cli- 
mate, may not be thrown away. Every American who looks beyond money making, 
to the relief of our country from this class of people, and to the settlement of the ha- 
rassing question of slavery, who is content to gain influence over the colored races of 
the tropics by using our own colored people as an instrumentality, instead of exposing 
thousands of our own race to that fatal climate, cannot hesitate to favor the policy I 
have indicated, of colonizing those vast tracts of country to the south of us, where 
white men are incapable of living, with our enfranchised negroes. 

NOTE H. 
The value to our Commerce of the proposed Colonies. 

I have often referred in the body of my remarks to the value of the system of colo- 
nies I have proposed. It is the fashion to declaim upon the failure of emancipation 
in the West Indies, and to exalt the prosperity of those islands where slavery prevails. 
Many persons will be surprised to find, from the extracts I subjoin, that our export com- 
merce to Hayti is so much more valuable than that to Cuba, the value of which it is 
customary to exaggerate as greatly as the former is depreciated. Formerly, the Gov- 
ernment of Hayti discriminated against the commerce of the United States, because 
of the refusal to acknowledge the independence of that island — our refusal to acknowl- 
edge a fact (for there is no fact better established than that this island is independent) 
grew out of the deference paid by our Government to the sensitiveness of the slave- 
holding States. This refusal was resented by Hayti, and the result was a loss of its 
commerce by our citizens, on account of the discrimination against us. But the good 
sense of the Government of Hayti induced it to abolish this discriminating duty, and 
admit our commerce upon an equal footing with other nations; and I find from a work 
published by Congress upon the subject of our Commercial Relations, vol. I, p. 570, 
that "our merchants at once disputed the pre-eminence hitherto held by other na- 
tions in the general trade of Hayti." A French authority, quoted in the above work, 
s.iys: "Among the countries with which the United States have commercial inter- 
course, Hayti holds the ninth rank as respects tonnage; all the States are more or 
less interested in the Haytien trade. The Northwestern States find a market there for 
their fish and other merchandise; Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, 
Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri, for their salted pork; Vermont, New York, 
Massachusetts, Illinois, and Ohio, for their salted beef; Philadelphia and Boston, North 
and South Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky, for their household furniture, their rice 
and tobacco. The manufacturers of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania, have 
already secured an extensive market in Hayti for their cheap cott6n textures, and suc- 
cessfully compete with European manufacturers. 

The official returns of the United States show that Mexico, with a population of 

8,000,000, imported from the different ports of the Union, in 1851, Jess by $350,696 

than Hayti. The trade of the United States with the latter country is therefore more 

• profitable than that with Mexico. Indeed, American vessels generally return in bal- 



30 

last from Mexican ports, or go to other States in search of freight, while in Hayti they 
always find cargoes. * * * In 1851, the United States exported to Hayti cottou 
goods valued at $296,000, while the value of similar goods exported to Cuba reached 
only $26,000. The soap exported from the United States to the former country (Hayti) 
exceeded 1,928,682 por-nds, to the latter (Cuba) only 389,748. Hayti received from 
the United States in 1851 eight times as much flour as Cuba, and six times as much 
salted pork. 

"Notwithstanding the United States has not recognised the independence of Hayti, 
nor entered into any treaty with its Government, the restrictions and petty annoyances 
to which our merchants and citizens in that country have heretofore been subjected 
are now removed, and the fruits of this more liberal and friendly feeling are witnessed 
in our annually increasing commerce and in the preponderance of, and preference for, 
American merchandise in the markets of Hayti." This favorable change is not due 
to any wise policy on our part, but to the good sense of the Emperor of Hayti, and 
the work already quoted goes on to say: "This liberal state of things may, however, 
at auy moment, change. In the absence of a commercial treaty between the two 
countries, our relations with Hayti are dependent on the will or caprice of the Em- 
peror. In this respect, France and England are on a safer footing than the United 
States." 

NOTE I. 
A mode by which ovf Slaves could be Liberated and Removed without loss to their Otvners. 

One of the most difficult points to be overcome, in any scheme for the emancipation 
of our slaves, is to provide the funds to pay the owners whose property is taken from 
them. It cannot reasonably be expected that the masters of slaves would be willing 
to submit to the loss of their property without compensation, and it is very difficult 
to see how the means of making compensation is to be provided. Tlie suggestions 
contained in the following extract from the letter of Earl Grey to Lord John Russell, 
on the Island of Trinidad, may furnish a key to relieve us of this difficulty. Speaking 
of the attempts to obtain a supply of labor in Trinidad and Guiana, he says: "Why 
should not the owner of an estate in one of these colonies liberate by purchase, and 
settle upon his property, a whole gang of slaves from some of the worn-out tobacco 
or cotton plantations in Virginia and Maryland, taking from them an engagement to repay 
out of their wages, by instalments, an amount sufficient to cover the price of their freedoni, the 
cost of their removal to the colony, and a fair per centage to meet the risk of loss? " * * * 
" The ready concurrence of the slaves in such an arrangement may therefore, I think, 
be reckoned upon; and in the present state of feeling in the United States on the sub- 
ject of slavery, I believe that many of the slave owners would no less gladly avail them- 
selves of such a mode of relieving themselves from a description of property which is 
daily becoming more difficult and more painful for them to retain. It may also be 
well worth inquiry, on the part of non-resident owners of West India property, whether 
they might not derive far more advantage from their estates than they now do, by 
letting them to experienced American planters, who might be induced to come over 
and occupy them, at the head of their slaves, emancipated for the purpose, on such terms 
as I have suggested.'^ If our Government should acquire territory in the tropics, Avith 
the view of settling it with free negroes, and relieving us of this encumbrance, it might 
be made lawful for slave owners to make compositions with their slaves, and allow them 
to be removed thither and work out their freedom. This privilege is often permitted 
to slaves in this country. It could be accomplished in a much less time in the tropics, 
and would relieve us of one of the greatest obstacles which blocks the way to eman- 
cipation. 

NOTE K. 

Governor Wise in a letter addressed to E. Lucouture, agent of the " Franco-Ameri- 
can Trans-Atlantic Navigation Company," on the subject of a proposed line of steamers 
between France and Virginia, makes the following statement: 

" Looking at the map of Virginia, you see the whole Atlantic low lands watered by 
the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the Piankatank, the rivers of Mobjack bay, the York, 
the James, and the Roanoke, streams rising in the great Appalachian chain of moun- 
tains, and running a few miles only apart from each other in parallel lines, from west 
to east, and all of them except t])e last emptying into the grand reservoir of the Chesa- 
peake bay, which entirely cuts off the main eastern peninsula. Thus all the eastern 
and first-settled part of the territory was found naturally divided into no less than 
seven distinct peninsulas, separated from each other by eight considerable bodies of 
navigable Avaters. Up all these waters the tonnage of Great Britain came and found 
facilities of shipment everywhere, deep water, wharfage, and accessibility to navigation,, 
up to the very steps of the Blue Ridge of the Alleghanies. This also tended to diffuse 



31 

population and capital, and prevented the concentration of either at any one point, to 
form a city for purposes of commerce. Every plantation found a landing at its own 
fields or near its own neijiliborhood, and but a ship load had to be collected at any one 
locality, such was the convenience to and from market of the earliest settlements of 
Eastern Virginia." 

This statement is not less remarkable for its truthfulness in delineating the unri- 
valled commercial position of Virginia, than for its error in concluding that the facili- 
ties for commerce which that position affords is the cause of the discouragement of 
commerce. W'hen commerce refuses to flourish in a country wliere "every plantation 
found a landing at its own fields," with "deep water, wharfage, and accessibility to 
navigation, up to the very steps of the Blue Ridge of the Alleghanies," the Governor 
will find it difficult to persuade people that these very facilities for commerce are the 
cause of this refusal. The Governor knows the real cause. 

Lieutenant Maury, in the year 1854, addressed a series of letters to his son, which 
were published in the papers at Richmond and Washington city. In these letters he 
proved that the harbor of Norfolk, Va., was the best on the Atlantic coast, that it was 
nearer to Chicago than the port of New York, and that water communication could 
be more easily established between that point and Norfolk than New York. He shows, 
also, that it is nearer and more accessible to the waters of the Ohio than any other 
Atlantic seaport, and, after descanting at large upon the other vast interior regions 
and rivers tributary to it, he concludes that it otiffhf, by its position and natural advan- 
tages, to excel every city on the Continent. He then gives every reason but the right 
one to explain why Norfolk and Virginia have not attained the prosperity which Nature 
intended. I will tell him the true cause. It is because the sons of Virginia, of ivhom 
he is one, dare not divulge the real cause, and tell the people, who look to them for 
counsel and guidance, that negro slavery is the black drug of opium that has put their 
energies to sleep. If Washington, Jefferson, and Randolph, were patriots for desiring 
to relieve Virginia of this incubus, those who are trying to strap it more tightly on 
her back, are not. 



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